Tech

Super Bowl season typically brings an uptick in deals for TV tech. True to form, Sonos has announced discounts for a handful of its home theater devices. Here’s a rundown of the smart-speaker maker’s offerings: The Sonos Beam soundbar is available for $349, a $50 discount. The company’s larger soundbar, the Sonos Playbar, is available for $599, a $100 discount. The Sonos Playbase, a speaker designed to sit under TVs that aren’t wall mounted, is available for $599, a $100 discount. The Sonos Sub wireless subwoofer is also available for $599, another $100 discount. Various bundles that include a mixture of the products above and/or the company’s Sonos One smart speakers are also discounted. The deals are available on the Sonos website as well as third-party retailers like Amazon. Sonos says they will last until February 3, the date of Super Bowl LIII. In a vacuum, none of the discounts are massive. But deals on Sonos speakers are rare, and the prices here … [Read more...] about Dealmaster: A bunch of Sonos speakers are discounted for the Super Bowl

Ugh, the Gregorian calendar is so boring. That’s why we’re disrupting monthly series with a lunar cycle-based series about the best patents of the last synodic month, picked by the PatentYogi team. Get ready when that moon gets gibbous, y’all. This December-ish roundup lands on the awe-inspiring Wolf Moon! Since my last post, the US patent office issued over 25,433 patents and published over 29,543 patent applications. Each patent asset adds a little something new to the human knowledge base. As I cannot list all these patent assets here, the PatentYogi team and I have selected the five most interesting patent assets. Enjoy! Patent #1. Ford invents ‘Roomba-drone’ for cars (20190009908) Blockchain and cryptocurrency news minus the bullshit. Visit Hard Fork. CLICK IT A recently published patent from Ford reveals a vehicle cleaning drone. Upon receiving cleaning instructions from you through a smartphone, the cleaning drone will fly towards … [Read more...] about Full moon patents: Apple hints at new ‘smart ring’ and glass-covered iPhone

WhatsApp will now limit users to forwarding a message only five times, in an attempt to cut down on the spread of misinformation. According to Reuters, the five time forwarding limit is being implemented across the world starting today. While fake stories and deceitful groups on Facebook have been the focus in the US, misinformation on WhatsApp has become a problem elsewhere in the world. In Brazil, it became a particularly big issue ahead of the country’s presidential elections in October, as bad voting information, conspiracy theories, and false stories about candidates spread across the network. One study of the most widely shared images in Brazilian political group chats found that more than half of the top 50 images were misleading, with many being completely false or presented out of context. WhatsApp initially limited messages to being forwarded 20 times in July, with the five time forwarding limit being tested out in India. Before that, you could forward a message to up … [Read more...] about WhatsApp limits message forwarding in fight against misinformation

The drone manufacturer DJI has discovered millions of dollars worth of fraud committed by its employees, the company has announced (via Bloomberg). The company has said it expects the losses from the fraud to amount to around 1 billion yuan (around $150 million USD) and that “a number” of its employees have been fired over the discovery. The Financial Times reports that this number could be as high as 29 employees. In a statement sent to Engadget, the company said that some of its 14,000 employees had been inflating the cost of parts and materials for financial gain. In response, along with dismissing a number of employees, DJI said that it has alerted law enforcement, and has also set up new internal channels for whistleblowers to report fraud. The Shenzhen-based company is currently the biggest drone manufacturer in the world, with control of around 75 percent of the market. As well as consumer models like the Mavic 2 and Mavic Air, the company is increasingly investing … [Read more...] about DJI says employee fraud will cost it up to $150 million

A recent registration with the World Intellectual Property Organisation may have just given us our first look at Lenovo’s Motorola RAZR remake with a folding display. The design, which was filed on December 17th 2018 and first spotted by 91Mobiles, appears to show a device with a folding screen on the inside, alongside a second smaller screen on the outside. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Motorola is intending to relaunch the RAZR as a $1,500 foldable screen smartphone next month. Although the RAZR name does not appear anywhere on Motorola Mobility’s registration, the design bears an uncanny resemblance to the iconic handset, right down to the thick chin on the bottom of the device. The big change is that on the inside of the phone the old combination of screen and buttons have been replaced with a single long, folding screen, which matches the WSJ’s one detail about the appearance of the upcoming remake. Questions about whether Motorola will … [Read more...] about Is this the Motorola RAZR with folding display?